


i can tell that your heart isn't in it or with it

by somepeoplearewild



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Fate & Destiny, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, One-Sided Relationship, Romance, Trigger warning: cutting even though it's not self-destructive. it's ritualistic, larry stylinson - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 21:39:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somepeoplearewild/pseuds/somepeoplearewild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Larry Stylinson is real. Like he's a person. And he just appeared out of nowhere.</p><p>[Louis, Harry, and Larry are 3 separate people... kind of.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	i can tell that your heart isn't in it or with it

**Author's Note:**

> Okay this was a really good idea but I don't think I did it justice, so if you want to take the concept and write your own fic using it, feel free.

In retrospect, perhaps calling it 'the biggest load of bullshit' wasn't the best way Louis could have handled this situation.

Then again, his fans are annoying as shit and half of them can't fucking understand that he's not dating Harry. He hasn't dated Harry since 2011, but no one can fucking accept that, can they? They just keep shaming his current girlfriend and calling him a closet gay, which he's _not_. He just doesn't feel like his sexuality needs a press statement, okay?

And he tells Harry as much before they get into bed that night. Actually, he yells it then curses Harry who curses him back for being a little bitch. So they both go to bed seething, regretting opting for the king sized bed over two doubles.

[][][][]

Harry feels breath on his upper lip and four long, gangly limbs wrapped around him like an octopus, which is weird because Louis is normally not a cuddler. He's the type to put up pillow barricades so that his half of the mattress is not infringed upon.

"Move, Lou," Harry mumbles sleepily. He's hot enough as it is with him stripped right down to his briefs; he doesn't need Louis suffocating him with his fat arse.

The person wrapped around Harry grumbles back, squeezing tighter and shivering. "M'cold," a deep voice replies that is most definitely _not_ Louis and his high scratchy trill.

Harry sits up straight, shoving the other guy off of him, knocking the stranger into Louis who punches the intruder and releases a pathetic whine.

"Harry, you fat fuck! Move!"

The other guy cries out and sits up, rubbing his eyes with two giant hands that Harry has seen before. "W-where am I?" He moves his hands causing Harry to gasp. "And who are– oh my."

The boy in the middle of the bed has stunning eyes, one blue and one green. His lips are plush and pink with an almost cruel twist to the corners. He has dark, feathery hair with sprigs of curls poking out here and there and the best cheekbones Harry's seen since Louis' Hasboro doll. He's also got a cute button nose and two heavenly arched eyebrows. And fuck if his body isn't delightfully pale with strong arms and a slight tummy. Harry doesn't even want to see his arse. It's probably amazing.

"Who am I?" Harry asks in a daze. "Who are _you_?"

"I'm Larry."

"Larry...?"

"Stylinson."

Harry stares at the boy, trying to rationalise his existence because now that he thinks about it this guy is the perfect combination of Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles right down to the deep yet pitchy voice. "Right. Okay. Could you just- uhhh... wake up? The- uh- guy beside you?"

"But he hit me."

"He hits me too. Here, switch-" Harry grunts out, untangling himself from the hotel's fluffy, white duvet. "-switch... with me."

The two boys cross in a tangle of awkward pleasantries and sharp elbows.

"Lou," Harry gasps as he falls into place beside the sleeping figure. He grabs the edge of the covers above Louis' head and rustles them around. "Louis, wake up."

"Piss off, Styles!"

"Louis, I think Larry Stylinson is real."

Louis' bedhead peaks from under the blanket as well two very annoyed slate grey eyes. "You're fucking kidding me."

"No! Lou-"

"What time is it? I swear to god if the sun isn't out yet-"

"No! Listen to me!"

"-I will twist all four of your nipples backwards-"

"Larry is real!"

"-Until they tear off and blood is spurting across the room."

"Look!" Harry collapses onto his back so that 'Larry' is visible to Louis.

"Who the fuck is that?"

"Me?" the boy asks dumbly, looking over both his shoulders to make sure nobody is behind him. When he sees no one, he turns back around and points to himself. "I'm Larry."

Harry thinks that Louis will have the same moment of realisation and understanding, but Louis just gives Harry this _look_ that spells out 'DISAPPOINTMENT' and 'DISDAIN' in all capital letters.

"I repeat, you're fucking kidding me."

"If I was fucking kidding you could I do this?" Harry pinches himself then yelps.

"I said you were kidding. Not you were dreaming, you absolute retard."

Louis sits up fully and examines the boy who has that same expression of absent mind which should just go ahead and establish a permanent residence on Harry's face.

"Listen, I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want, but unlike Harry, here, I won't be so easily fooled. And unlike Harry, I actually graduated college."

Harry's eyebrows shoot up in offence. "Irrelevant! That has nothing to do with this!"

Louis ignores Harry in favour of speaking to the stranger with the eerie calm of a man who would kill without remorse. "So you tell me who the fuck you are and what the fuck you're doing here, or else I'll bypass security and push you off the balcony myself."

The boy looks panicked for a moment. "I-I told you! I'm Larry!"

"Larry _who_?!" Louis shouts, angrily jabbing a finger into the interloper's chest.

"Larry Stylinson!"

"Don't you fuckin lie to me! I'll kill you and claim self-defence!"

"No! Don't do that! You would die!"

"Like hell I would! Was that a fucking threat?!"

Harry, who's been staring with his mouth open for the past three minutes, snaps back to reality and pushes his body between the other two. "Louis, you remember that night when I made a joke about Zayn and Perrie getting engaged and Liam going public with Sophia and Niall finally getting a rumour in the press?"

"What does-"

Harry cuts Louis off, despite the chance of receiving never ending shit from Louis about it later. "Then the very next day, Zayn told us he had proposed to Perrie and Liam confirmed Sophia and Niall was supposedly fucking Ellie Goulding! I had this gut feeling, okay? And I should have listened to it because it was right! Well, I have a gut feeling about this guy! I think we should listen to him or at least let him explain."

"Do you fucking hear yourself? He says he's Larry Stylinson. He literally snuck into our bed. Why should we let him explain?"

"Remember that one time-"

"No." Louis stops him right there, physically preventing Harry from continuing with a hand over his mouth. "Not another anecdote. I'd rather listen to this bag of cats explain his shit."

Harry grins triumphantly underneath Louis' hand.

[][][][]

"Explain yourself. Now," Louis commands from where he's draped across the silky, chinoiserie-patterned sofa in the hotel room's small sitting area, forcing both Harry and 'Larry' to squeeze together on a tiny loveseat on the other side of the antique tea table in front of him.

The boy swallows nervously, his Adam's apple bobbing under the pale skin of his throat. "I'm Larry Stylinson."

"Yeah, you've said so like twenty fuckin ti-"

Harry shushes Louis and gives him a pointed glare before turning back to Larry with a soft, encouraging smile, which contradicts the underlying bite in his words. "I want to hear you talk, and Louis is going to shut the fuck up and let you because he is literally four feet tall and I will step on him if he interrupts you again."

The boy nods and centres himself, trying to remember what he was going to say. "Oh! Yes, right, well erm... Like I apparently said twenty times, I am Larry Stylinson. That's not actually my _name_ per se; it's more like my definition. I am nothing more than a concept materialised– the concept of Larry Stylinson. If you want to be technical, I could also be called 'Lourry', but addressing me by that label is comparatively uncommon and also I don't like it so I'm Larry."

'Larry' takes a breath, searching Louis' face for objection then Harry's for confirmation.

"Um, yeah. By calling myself Larry Stylinson, I am simply denoting the relationship between you, Harry, and you, Louis. I-I'm not quite sure how to break this down for you two... Uhh... _Oh!_ uh, like say that there were two puzzles with millions of pieces, but fate decides to put half of the green puzzle and half of the blue puzzle in one box and mixes them up. Then, an eternity later, fate's great grandchild, reality, finds the box, but reality doesn't know that the pieces are of two different puzzles and tries to put the pieces together as one puzzle. The edges of course don't match up, so baby reality smashes them together until they fit. I am the smashed up puzzle."

Louis and Harry both scrunch up their faces in confusion. None of that made any sense.

At all.

The boy sighs exasperatedly. "What I'm trying to say is that I'm not supposed to exist! I am everything about Harry that has to do with Louis and everything about Louis that has to do with Harry, but you're not supposed to be able to see me! Reality went and fucked up and instead of creating Louis and Harry, it created half of Louis, half of Harry, and a relationship with skin! I'm freaking out, man! I have genitals! And- look at this!" Larry points to the rise and fall of his chest. "Breathing?! Are you serious?! Could I be any more human?!"

Harry puts his hand on Larry's shoulder, trying to calm the lad down before he hyperventilates and passes out.

"So... if I'm only half of me, what's my other half that I haven't got?" Louis inquires, seemingly unaffected by the mental breakdown taking place before him.

"That's the problem! I am your other half, and I am Harry's other half. But the parts of you two are all mixed up and I just can't sort through them! I've been trying for 21 years, but it's like trying to make two piles of my atoms– I just can't do it!" Larry drops his head into his hands, pushing away a few tears of frustration before looping his fingers around the roots of his hair and tugging harshly.

"What can we do to help?" Harry asks quietly. "You seem to know a lot more than we do."

Larry speaks, head still bowed between his knees. "There was one time..." He sniffs and sits back up, trying to regain his composure. "...one time that I went away. I'm not like humans. I wasn't born, and I won't die. But I was freed from my mortal being. In 2010, according to earth years, a few months after the two of you met. That is when you were together isn't it?"

Louis rolls his eyes. "We're in a band. We're always together."

"You know what I meant," Larry glares. "When you were in understood romantic unity with each other. I was, for a while, allowed to take the form of a cosmic force because I had purpose in being one. I was meant to be a bond, but when the bond is broken, I am human. When you two departed from romantic unity, I was forced back into this body. So what I'm trying to say is that you two must be together to be complete. I can't take myself apart to make you guys whole again, but I can bond Louis' half to Harry's half with the mixture of LouisandHarry. But it must be both of you, not one or the other."

"So what you're saying is that we're soulmates," Harry breathes in wonder while Louis bites his tongue to keep from insulting Harry for using that godawful term.

"Uh, no. You're not necessarily soulmates. Louis could be soulmates with Eleanor, but she will never complete him the way that you and I can. A soulmate is someone who matches up with you, but you two do not match. You cannot align, and you do not reflect one another. You create something new entirely like sewing scraps of cloth into a quilt. A combination of opposites, balanced like yin and yang."

A long silence captures the room as Louis stares at Harry like he can see down to his soul and is unimpressed with what he has found there. "But I could never be with Harry," he utters quietly, resolutely as he looks Harry in the eye.

"And I could never hold him back," Harry whispers, dropping his gaze to his lap.

This is just like before, when they ended it the first time except now there's nothing to end. There's only confirmation and acceptance, and Harry can't help but refuse both.

"Then I should let you know that since you're only half of a life, you only get half of a lifetime. And that nagging emptiness in your chests, it won't go away. Not by anyone, not by anything. I will live on forever. I was not born, and I will not die. But you will, and when you go it will be sorrowful, and the life that flashes before your eyes will make you wish you'd died sooner."

Larry stands up and walks to the door. He places his hand on the shiny knob, but does not turn it.

"If I leave, I shall not return."

Louis' vision flicks between the hand on the knob and the boy on the loveseat, who has his knees drawn to his chest like he's coddling himself from defeat. Louis knows he a cruel person. He relishes in that backhanded way of getting what he wants. He's vindictive and has a habit of convicting the innocent simply because he's not brave enough to climb down from the pedestal on which he's placed his goals and opinions. Louis can be a cheat, a liar, and an arsehole.

But Louis doesn't know if he can be a murderer.

He doesn't know how he's supposed to sacrifice Harry's happiness in order to prove to this stranger his love for a girl who could change her mind. To act like he wasn't buying into this bullshit, but risk ruining Harry's life and cutting it short. Louis would rather die himself than take away Harry's chance at living.

"Wait," he mumbles just as Larry's fist tightens around the polished brass.

"Yes?" Larry answers back, eyebrow raised like he really expects Louis to say nevermind and watch the door close behind him.

"What does bonding mean?"

"Louis!" Harry gasps, looking up from his bundle of limbs. "What are y-"

"What does bonding mean?" Louis asks again, but firmer.

"It means that you will never need another person like you will need Harry. You will feel him stronger than love and deeper than hatred. The thread of his emotions will be the hem of your actions, and you will be physically incapable of betrayal."

"Will I have to give up Eleanor?"

"The question you should be asking is if you'll want to keep her."

"But Harry will be happy?"

"Lou, I don't-"

"He'll be able to live? Would he love me? Could I love him?"

Larry gives Louis a hopeful look. "There's only one way to find out."

"Wait a minute!" Harry finally shouts. "Can't _I_ get a word in here?!"

"No, shut up. I'm trying to be noble and shit."

"Well what if I want you to be happy and shit?!"

"The guy said it himself! We'll both die sad and alone if we don't at least try!"

"I won't do it!"

[][][][]

"Don't look so smug."

Louis smiles big and boastfully. "Whatever do you mean, Harold?" Louis takes the razor blade from Larry and balances it over the heel of his left hand.

"Carve his initials into your palm," Larry instructs, green and blue eyes twinkling with morbid excitement at the first few drops of blood.

Slowly the letters _H.E.S._ appear in Louis' flesh, filling with blood, which drips crimson into the porcelain sink.

Louis blows out a rugged breath and rinses the razor off, handing it to Harry.

"Don't wash off the blood from your hand. Harry, do the same."

 _L._ Harry tears up from the pain. Years of tripping down the stairs never quite prepared him for this kind of pain– simultaneously physical and emotional. _W._ Harry bites down on his lip. Just one last letter and he can have it all. He can finally have Louis. Just two more cuts.

"Please, Harry," Louis whimpers pathetically, his stinging incisions still oozing red.

Harry closes his eyes as he positions the blade.

_T._

Larry snatches their hands up, knocking the blade to the floor. In a second their wounds are pushed together, blood mingling, and in another everything goes black.

[][][][]

"Lads, wake up! We gotta go! Slept the whole day yesterday, yer tails oughta be bushy as fuck!"

Harry and Louis jolt forward, panting and confused. They wouldn't have even known Larry had been there– had been _real_ – if it wasn't for the fresh scars on their palms:

_L.S._


End file.
